


Just Seeing Wings

by amethystviolist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas has wings, Flowers, M/M, Necromancy, feathers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4418126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amethystviolist/pseuds/amethystviolist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It wasn’t a spell to raise the victim from the grave, Dean,” Cas sighed, still turned away from Dean as he stared determinedly out the window. He seemingly was unaware of Dean’s continued speechlessness and incessant open-mouthed staring. “It was a spell to retrieve a creature from another dimension. The magic would have killed you, and possibly-”<br/>“You have wings,” Dean finally choked out. Cas spun around instantly, his wings flaring out to their full length. Dean sucked in a breath when one of them smacked into a table, but the dark feathers passed through the table like it was made of smoke.<br/>“You can see my wings?” Cas repeated, concern and confusion in his voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Seeing Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published to Tumblr. Written for the three-word prompt "Destiel: necromancy, feathers, flowers".  
> "I'm just seeing things," Dean whispers, trying to blink away the black feathers before his eyes. "Nope. You're just seeing WINGS! HA!" laughs Mimi. Laugh at my punny title. It is beautiful and you know it.  
> Hope you enjoy!

The graveyard was really quite cold. Bare trees shuddered in the wind, and the full moon lit the ground visible between the headstones with an eerie light, casting mysterious shadows on all sides. It was your typically perfect night for raising the dead, which for once was actually a good thing. Dean kneeled before the fresh dirt and newly cut headstone, opening his duffel bag to withdraw the materials he had gathered that day.

Black candles had been easy to find; he’d just bought a pack of ten at Walmart. He arranged five of them in a ring over the fresh dirt, setting his lighter to the side until the rest of the spell was ready. Next he opened the two jars of flowers. The flowers that were an ugly yellow color- laburnum or something like that- hadn’t been easy to find, and the purple ones, which were vervain, hadn’t been much easier. Fortunately, a few visits to florists in the area and a few weird questions about his flower choices wasn’t the hardest he’d ever had to work for a spell. He dumped both jars of flowers into a metal bowl, briefly mixing them with his fingers, and set it in the middle of the pentagram. Dean stood, lit the candles, and shook back his sleeves. Now for the real work. The wind seemed to blow even colder as Dean began to speak.

“ _Hoc mortuo spiritus capere vivum corpus_ ,” Dean began chanting, suddenly glad of the practice he’d done before the real spell. Latin was a weird language.

“ _Quod vas praebeo vita defunctus est_!” The yellow laburnum flowers sparked and caught fire, nearly making Dean stumble over his words, but he quickly regained his calm. He held the silver knife he normally used on werewolves and shifters, and brought it to his palm. A quick slice, and drops of blood splashed to land on the flowers, making the vervain begin to glow with a strange, muted light. The ground around the grave began to quake.

“ _Mortui vivunt intus etiam hac no_ -” Just as Dean raised his voice to finish the spell, the ground shaking more and more violently beneath him, his instinct telling him with a cold spike of dread that the top of the grave was going to crack open, a heavy weight crashed into his shoulder and ripped him away. Dean blinked, recognizing the motel room where he had left Sam. The graveyard and the spell were both gone, his work at raising the witness now thrown to the winds. Right now, Sam was nowhere to be seen in the motel room, but Dean quickly found that someone else was.

Castiel. And he looked pissed.

“Cas, I-” Dean began, but was cut off by a sharp, blue-eyed look inches away from his face. Dean swallowed nervously.

“What do you think you were doing?” Cas demanded, stepping closer to Dean and narrowing his eyes.

“We needed some info for a case, Cas, calm down!” Dean backed up a step, his hands held up placatingly. Last time Cas got angry with him, it ended with him bloodied in an alley, and he had no desire to repeat that experience.

“So you decide to raise the dead?!” Castiel nearly snarled, following Dean until the hunter was backed against a wall. Dean couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the angels’ face, torn between happiness and frustration. They hadn’t seen Cas in weeks, and then when he finally showed up, he was ready to rip Dean’s face off. Perfect. Cas brought his face uncomfortably close to Dean’s, his eyes sparking with anger. The closeness wasn’t helping how hard Dean was trying to keep his mind off the last time he had a fight with a girlfriend, because that argument had ended in awesome half-angry makeup sex, and if Cas somehow ended up in her place in his thoughts, well… it was very distracting.

“Cas, listen, the chick was murdered, and we aren’t sure-” Dean tried to say, but again Cas interrupted.

“Did you even realize what you were saying?” Cas continued. “You didn’t even try to translate the Latin, did you? You are the single most ignorant, reckless, unobservant, callow hunter-”

“D'you want a thesaurus?” Dean offered sarcastically. Cas’s blue eyes flashed like lightning, but an instant before Dean was preparing to be smited, Cas stepped away, turning his back to Dean with a heavy, frustrated sigh. Dean let himself relax incrementally now that Cas was more than an inch from his face. That’s when Dean first noticed, now that Cas was a reasonable distance away, that there was something very, very different about Cas, and his jaw practically dropped to the carpet.

Cas had wings.

He gasped softly, taking in the sight before him with something like awe. Cas had full, feathered, beautiful wings. Dean had seen their shadow before, but that was incomparable to the real appendages spread before him. Since meeting heaven’s douchebags, Dean had always pictured angel wings as white, but Cas had wings black as a raven’s, that lightened to almost gray at the very tips of the outermost feathers. There were countless feathers, a sea of luminous black. The wings were each at least six feet long, but possibly even larger, since they were currently hidden as they lay half-folded around Cas’s body. The angel gazed at the ceiling, clearly trying to control his anger and oblivious to Dean’s revelation. Dean’s jaw was moving like a fish out of water, but no sound emerged as he tried to get over just how completely beautiful Cas’s wings were.

“You don’t understand what you were doing. That spell was necromancy of the darkest kind,” Cas explained. Dean stepped away from the wall to sit on the edge of the narrow bed, his wide eyes glued to Cas’s wings. They moved gracefully as Cas talked, far more expressive than Cas’s hands or face. At the moment they were enlarged, puffed-up as for defense, and seemingly twitchy.

“It wasn’t a spell to raise the victim from the grave, Dean,” Cas sighed, still turned away from Dean as he stared determinedly out the window. He seemingly was unaware of Dean’s continued speechlessness and incessant open-mouthed staring. “It was a spell to retrieve a creature from another dimension. The magic would have killed you, and possibly-”

“You have wings,” Dean finally choked out. Cas spun around instantly, his wings flaring out to their full length. Dean sucked in a breath when one of them smacked into a table, but the dark feathers passed through the table like it was made of smoke.

“You can see my wings?” Cas repeated, concern and confusion in his voice.

“Yeah, Cas, they’re-” _totally and completely gorgeous? absolutely and undeniably magnificent?_ "-enormous,“ he finished. On a whim, he stood and stretched out a hand toward the glossy black feathers. The wing jerked back before Dean could touch it, and he snatched his hand away, looking back to Cas with an unspoken apology on his face.

"How can you see my wings?” Cas wondered aloud. To Dean’s disappointment, the wings suddenly shrank and folded tightly against the back of the tan trenchcoat.

“I dunno. I’ve never seen them before now,” Dean added. Cas looked extremely uncomfortable.

“There are very few cases in which a human can see an angel’s wings. They exist on a different plane entirely, and their manifestation can be… detrimental to human health.” Cas stepped close to Dean again, and placed a hand on his plaid-covered chest.

“Hey, woah! What are you-” Dean started to protest, fearing yet more rib carving, but Cas had already withdrawn his hand, his confused frown even deeper.

“Your heartbeat has accelerated, but your body temperature seems to be normal,” Cas assessed. Dean swallowed nervously, hoping Cas couldn’t tell the reason behind his pounding heart. “Do you feel any strange burning or itching? Especially around your eyes?”

“Uh. No,” replied Dean, blinking them a few times. “I feel fine, Cas.”

“Perhaps it was the spell,” continued Cas, staring at Dean critically. “Such powerful magic coursing through you… Did you give the spell your blood?”

“Yeah, I had just done that when you snagged me,” Dean answered, displaying the fresh scab on his palm. Cas’s brow furrowed.

“Does it hurt?” he asked suddenly. Dean shrugged, studying the cut.

“Not much. Kinda used to it, you know?” Cas nodded thoughtfully, then stretched a hand over Dean’s, the blue-white light of his Grace beginning to glow when Dean jerked his hand back.

“Woah! Hold up there, Josh Foley, it’s just a cut! Reserve your mojo for better things,” advised Dean, watching how Cas’s wings suddenly expanded. To his surprise, they began to curl forward, towards him, and he hoped for an instant that he could finally touch them, see if they were soft as they looked- then Cas blinked, and the wings retracted.

“My apologies, my wings, they… They can be rather independent of my will. However,” Cas continued, shaking his wings back once more, “I see no better use for my Grace than using it to heal a friend.” Dean couldn’t help but notice the slight flutter of the black feathers at the word friend, and his heart beat even faster. The visual reminder that Cas wasn’t human should make Dean’s little man-crush go away, right?

Nope. Apparently Dean’s libido just found Cas with wings even more attractive, which would have seemed an unlikely situation before now. Objectively speaking, Jimmy Novak was a fairly good-looking guy, true, but something about the expressions he made were just so Cas-like, even down to his posture; it forced Dean to forget that Cas didn’t really have a corporeal form. More accurately, it made him forget that he had a schoolgirl crush on something the size of the Chrysler Building.

“I’m fine, Cas,” Dean grumbled, tearing himself out of his thoughts, and walked into the tiny motel bathroom, turning on the tap and rinsing the cut, if just to make the angel feel better. Cas followed him, standing awkwardly close behind Dean with his usual disregard for boundaries. The hunter scooted away with a wary, rather blushing look at Cas.

“Personal space, man?” Dean sighed, turning off the water and shaking his hand to dry it. Dean moved to walk out, practically bumping against his friend, but Cas didn’t move away. Dean’s heart jumped into his mouth. “Um. Cas?”

“What? Does this make you uncomfortable, Dean?” Cas asked, squinting his eyes as if he looked hard enough, he could see the answer in Dean’s eyes. Dean squirmed a little under the scrutiny.

“Cas, we’ve talked about this,” he said, dodging the question. “Remember?” There was a tense, quiet moment, before Cas stepped back, his wings stretching out beside him. With one strong flap, Cas was gone, to Dean’s surprise and disappointment. He let a soft sigh escape. Not like he wanted to say goodbye or anything stupid like that.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

It was days after Dean’s new vision had kicked in before he started noticing something weird. Cas had always seemed rather touch-conservative, keeping his physical contact to a minimum even if he didn’t understand personal space. But his wings were an entirely different story. When Dean woke up in the mornings after Cas had been watching over them (which was still incredibly creepy), he usually found one wing draped over him. It was always retracted immediately after he awoke, and Cas never said a word about it. But Dean sometimes even dreamed about the glossy black feathers, imagining that they had a physical weight and warmth that kept him safe.

If Dean was standing or sitting next to Cas, a wing would curl around his shoulders, tingling slightly as though his skin and his eyes were disagreeing on what he should feel. Then Dean would look at Cas, slightly surprised at the contact, but unlike before, when Dean and Cas would share eye contact briefly, now Cas just looked away quickly, and the wing would fold away just as fast. Dean wasn’t sure what to think. Had Cas always done this? He was practically holding Dean, wrapping him safely in the cover of black feathers. Whatever Cas was doing, it was confusing Dean. Was it normal for angels to touch humans with their wings? Was wing body language important between angels? Did Cas have embarrassingly small wings or something? He didn’t understand, and it was beginning to get frustrating.

Something had changed between them, like Dean had walked in on Cas naked (although he suspected, knowing Cas and his weird angel ideas, that probably would have had less effect than seeing his wings). The problem was, the new vision wasn’t going away, and maybe it never would. If he was stuck seeing Cas’s wings, and Cas was stuck being awkward about it, then things would never go back to normal. So finally, when Sam left for the library for yet another supply of lore books, Dean closed the laptop and crossed his arms, staring at Cas until he looked up from his book.

“Did you need something?” Cas asked politely.

“Yeah,” Dean answered determinedly. “I do, actually. I want to know why you’re so self-conscious about your wings. I mean, are you embarrassed about them?” Cas didn’t reply and looked away, avoiding Dean’s eyes by staring out the window. “Because I think they’re amazing, Cas, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Dean continued in a more gentle tone. “They’re awesome, actually. I’ve never seen anything so, just, breathtaking.” Cas retained a stoic look on his face, but his wings fluttered slightly. Dean knew he was listening. “Your wings are beautiful. But I can’t stop seeing them, so you need to get your act together. You’re always touching me with the things, but the moment I acknowledge it you run away.”

“What’s your point?” Cas cut through Dean’s complaints.

“What changed?” Dean demanded. “You have wings- so what? They’re freaking gorgeous, and-”

“Don’t say that,” Cas interrupted quietly, although the mass of black feathers seemed to almost preen themselves.

“What? That your wings are gorgeous?” Dean asked. The appendages in question twitched, the feathers ruffling slightly.

“That,” Cas affirmed calmly.

“Why not?” To Dean’s surprise, Cas’s face took on the slightest shade of pink. Not cute, not cute, not cute, Dean chanted silently.

“Because it makes me desire impossible things,” Cas replied, so sadly that Dean almost wanted to call him out on the puppy eyes.

“Like what?” Dean pressed. Cas’s lips flattened, taking on a frustrated look.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Fine,” Dean conceded. “Can you tell me what all the touching is for, then? It’s not that I mind,” he hastened to clarify, “I just thought you weren’t a very huggy person.”

“Strictly speaking, it is not ‘hugging’,” Cas observed. “It’s a gesture of… strong affection.”

“'Strong affection’, huh?” Dean smiled. “What, you tell all the angels you take to motel rooms that?” Dean added a wink at the end, and watched as Cas blushed a darker shade of pink, exactly the reaction Dean was hoping for.

“I’ve never taken an angel to a motel room, Dean,” Cas stated simply. “Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

“You need to get out more, Cas,” Dean encouraged him. “Can’t stay a priest your whole life, can you?”

“There’s already someone in mind,” Cas answered dismissively, and Dean felt his heart plummet. Of course there was. He hadn’t even considered that, because he was so focused on his own little drama. It hadn’t crossed his mind that Cas would be pursuing his own attractions- and why didn’t he see that before? Cas was attractive, and kind, and powerful, and funny, and… And everything anyone could want.

“Who’s the lucky angel? Or is she human?” Dean asked, trying to sound upbeat and not bitter.

“He is a human,” Cas corrected. Dean felt another pang of jealousy, observing Cas’s wings puff out, looking almost proud. This guy wouldn’t be able to see the beautiful wings Cas had, so at least Dean got to keep that for himself, he thought rather savagely.

“What’s he like?” Dean continued to question, feigning polite interest.

“Do you need to know?” Cas sighed, but his wings were still perked up.

“Yes,” Dean decided on the spur of the moment, and hoped he wouldn’t regret hearing about how wonderful Cas’s new date was.

“He has a bright soul,” Cas began, a small smile coming over his face. “The brightest I’ve ever seen. He seems to think little of himself, but he’s really quite brave. And very skilled at his job.” Dean opened his mouth to ask what exactly this guy did for a living, but the words died in his mouth as he noticed Cas’s wings. They were slowly, probably unconsciously, curling forward.

“His use of sarcasm can be amusing, although sometimes confusing,” Cas continued. “Aesthetically, his hair is short. His eyes are much older than his physical age, but it just lends more beauty to them.” The feathers were still moving closer as Cas, lost in imagining this person, talked on. Dean could hardly breathe. The wings were so close to touching him from the end of the bed where Cas was sitting. Dean very nearly moved closer to Cas, but didn’t want to so much as breathe, in case he broke the spell Cas was casting on the room with his deep, gravelly voice.

“He has a strong love for his family,” Cas added. “And is very protective of them. He loves his car very much, and is a talented mechanic, but I find more joy in the happiness he has while driving, rather than any happiness I get from the actual car.” What had Cas said earlier? 'Strong affection’ was the meaning of the wing-hugging? Dean watched with wide eyes as the black feathers finally curled around his shoulders, hoping and fearing the possible meaning of the gesture. The gesture Cas had been doing for who knows how long before Dean could see it. Dean’s heart skipped a beat or two just thinking about it, forgetting to listen to Cas talk about the human he liked.

Apparently Cas noticed either Dean’s inattention or palpitating heart and paused in his description to look steadily into Dean’s eyes. Dean could see fear there, and determination, and something else, something he was afraid to give a name to, because everyone who felt that for him ended up dead. There was a still, timeless silence before Cas at last finished his thoughts.

“He loves classic rock, and enjoys referencing things I do not understand- and his name is Dean Winchester.” There was the smallest instant of breath being let out from both men, before Dean moved forward as quickly as was humanly possible, sealing his lips to Cas’s. As far as first kisses went, it wasn’t the most technically skilled, but Dean couldn’t find it in himself to care, his heart pounding loudly as he felt the tingling that meant Cas had wrapped him completely in his wings, and the warmth of arms encircling his waist. He broke away at last, feeling giddily drunk on the emotions pulsing through him.

“You know what, Cas?” Dean asked, running a hand through his own hair with a barely-contained laugh, “I 'strong affection’ you, too.” Cas’s cheeks turned a light pink, and he chuckled.

“I suppose that was a strange way to say it. I was unused to you seeing my wings,” he added.

“Get used to it,” Dean replied shortly, and let his lips find Cas’s again.

When Sam came back to the room, he was more than surprised to find layers of outer clothing strewn around the bed, where Dean was snoring softly, dressed only in a T-shirt and boxers, an arm thrown over a very-much-awake Cas stripped down to the white dress shirt and dress pants. Sam blinked a few times before turning away, deciding maybe another hour at the library would do them all good.

 


End file.
